Drop Ship News

This is a much debated question and there are scads of naysayers all over the internet saying that you absolutely, positively cannot make any money as a dropship seller on eBay.

These are the most vocal ones, the killjoys that scoff at the very idea of making money with wholesale dropship products on eBay.

But the truth is that there is a whole other faction out there who is not talking about making money on eBay---they are just quietly going about the business of doing it.

There are many, many eBay dropship sellers!

Looking at it realistically, would these sellers stay on eBay, month after month, if they weren’t making money?

Of course not!

So, the true answer to the question of whether or not you can make money as an eBay dropshipper is Yes. Yes, you can! However, it won’t be a cakewalk. You must be ready to make a commitment to doing what it takes to be successful.

Like any other retail or e-tail business, you will have to adopt a hands on approach to generating traffic to your listings, making sales, and building a solid base of repeat customers.

There are several ways to drive traffic to your eBay listings. Here are a few:

Offer free shipping. Research has shown that online buyers, including those on eBay, love free shipping and will gravitate toward it even if the total price of an item is the same or more than another store or seller offering the identical item for less money, but with a shipping charge. The trick here is to factor the shipping cost into your price.

Use email marketing. Ebay has a very good system all set up to help you launch and maintain a successful email marketing campaign. To make the most of email marketing, you must actively solicit viewers and buyers to subscribe to your mailing list. Make it worth their while and it will be worth yours. For instance, you might offer half off shipping on their next purchase if they sign up to get your emails, or something along that line.

Make your titles pack a punch! Use the eBay Research Labs keyword tool to help you write a great title using the buzz words that drive traffic to your listings. Many sellers make the mistake of using crummy titles and then wonder why they aren’t making any sales. You have 54 characters---use them wisely!

Those are just a few things that will help you get sales on eBay. There are others. But the point is that the sales are there, waiting to be made by an enterprising dropship seller!

Many eBay dropshippers don’t think about doing email marketing like a regular ecommerce business, but the fact is that it can be extremely helpful in getting traffic to your listings and boosting eBay sales!

EBay actually has in place all of the things you need to have a successful email marketing campaign. You can send out a standard email, or customize it to suit your product niche and/or current sale or special promotion.

To get started with your email marketing for eBay:

Go to My eBay

Click “Marketing Tools” in the Account drop down menu

Click the “Email Marketing” link

Click “Create Email”

Once you have reached this point, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get creative!

You can now choose the email template and layout that you want to use. There are several templates to select from, including Welcome, Ending Soonest, Newly Listed, Previous Purchase, or Custom.

The Custom template allows you to really do your own thing and generate your own creative content and layout.

You begin by entering the subject of your email, or using the one already in the template. In the email subject space, your text will appear just after “eBay Seller Email.”

Next, you can use your store header just as you have it in your listings. It will show up at the top of your email and will include your store logo, name, and links to your categories and pages.

The next step is to either go with the standard message included in a template, or enter your own personalized message to the email recipients. You are allowed 96K of content, so you can have some fun with this. You are also allowed to post images as long as they are hosted by eBay, as well as eBay Store HTML Tags.

You can even feature specific items with larger photos by using the “Showcase” option! This is a fantastic feature and lets you put the spotlight on any special items you are promoting.

You may also show an item list of up to 50 items.

If you wish, you can include a link back to your Feedback profile. As far as frequency, you may choose to program automatic emails, or customize. According to eBay, your emails are most likely to be read on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Be sure to give viewers the option of signing up for your newsletters, and highlight it prominently to build a substantial subscription mailing list!

So, start today with an email marketing campaign---a real shot in the arm for eBay dropshippers!

It has a user friendly, simple interface that is extremely easy to set up and use, but all of the bells and whistles you could possibly want to dress up and customize your blog.

How to Make a Blog Work for You

A blog can be tremendously helpful in driving traffic to your dropship products, on your website or another venue such as eBay or Amazon. But it doesn’t work by magic!

In order to be effective and help increase your sales, you will need to make a commitment of time and effort.

Google and the other search engines love fresh, relevant content! So, while it isn’t necessary to try and compose some epic work along the lines of Gone With the Wind, you do need to make sure your blog posts are informative, entertaining, easy to read and well written with proper English.

A good average length for a blog post is 350-450 words. Anything much over that and you risk losing a viewer’s attention. So, as a general rule, keep your blog posts short and sweet for best results.

Update with new blog posts at least once a day if possible. Use your blog and keywords wisely so that the search engines will get to know you and know what you’re all about. This makes it easier for them to index and locate your dropship products.

If you are an eBay dropship seller, you should be aware that there will soon be yet another fee increase.

This one, like some of the others, comes to us as a wolf in sheep’s clothing---promising lower fees when in actuality, in many cases your fees will be higher.

What are the fee changes all about this time? In a nutshell. Ebay, not content with collecting listing fees when you list your widget, Final Value Fees once your item is sold and Paypal fees when your buyer pays for the item; will soon be collecting fees on what you collect from your buyers for shipping.

The story is that sellers will be rewarded for low cost or free shipping because while eBay will be charging fees on the shipping cost come July, they will reduce a seller’s Final Value Fees on the transaction.

Naturally, the Powers That Be at the Bay are touting this fee change as a good thing for sellers. But, many are speculating that the overriding reason for the decision to start charging fees on shipping charges is simply that eBay needs more money.

Here is what eBay has to say about this lovely new update:

“New fees reward low cost shipping.”

The new fees will help dropship or other sellers who are already selling with free shipping. For example, if you are a seller in the Clothing, Shoes & Accessories category, you will pay 2% less in fees on a $15 sale with free shipping.

This same item, if you sell it for $12 and collect $3 shipping, will cost you a little over 4% more in fees even though eBay has decreased your Final Value Fees.

What does this mean to sellers?

You will have to pad the cost of your item to be able to offer free shipping. Of course, this only works for Fixed Price listings. If you still prefer to sell in auction format, as many sellers of vintage and collectible items do, them you will have to incorporate your shipping cost into the starting price of the item in order to offer free shipping.

Either way, buyers are probably going to be angry and upset when prices go up across the board on eBay again due to another increase in seller fees.

Here is a free calculator generously donated for public use by some nice eBay seller. It will help you do the math and see exactly how these new fees will affect your eBay profits:

Dropship sellers can make a substantial income on eBay, but you have to keep an eye on your bottom line! So, be sure and educate yourself on this newest change so that you can adjust and adapt if necessary.

If you have a home business in dropship sales, you might consider selling on eBay!

Despite some changes that have been immensely unpopular with most sellers during the regime of the present CEO John Donahoe, it is still possible to earn a nice income on eBay.

But, in order to be successful with dropship sales on eBay, you must watch your Ps and Qs.

There is not a wide margin for error and if you are a relatively small seller, you will find yourself suspended from selling or restricted to a certain percentage of items you are allowed to sell each month if you receive more than 2-3 low Detailed Seller Ratings and/or bad feedback.

So, here are some tips that will help you navigate the tricky waters of the Bay:

1. eBay will raise your items in search if you offer free shipping. Why? Because eBay only receives a Final Value Free for the amount of the purchase, not including shipping charges. When you factor shipping cost into the price of your widget, eBay makes more money and you get elevated ranking in Best Match search.

2. If you offer free shipping, be sure to ship quickly and download the tracking info or Delivery Confirmation number for each item right away. If you adhere to this practice, buyers will not be allowed to leave anything but a “5” for shipping time and cost. The DSRs are on a scale of 1-5, so this will help your overall ratings.

3. Educate your buyers about the Detailed Seller Ratings! EBay, for some unfathomable reason, has not seen fit to do this, so you will have to do it yourself. When leaving feedback, buyers are told by eBay that a rating of “4” is good when the fact is that an average rating of 4.1 will get a seller suspended. Not good. So, it helps to print up a short little blurb about DSRs and enclose it in each package.

These are only a few things you might do to be successful in dropship sales on eBay, but if you follow these suggestions, it will help keep your ratings where you need them to be!

Starting in late October, you’ll have easy access to a streamlined reporting hub to share with eBay your full experience with a buyer.

Links to the new reporting hub will be at your fingertips—in the Feedback flow, in your Seller Dashboard, on the Contact Us page on eBay, the seller information page in the eBay Buyer Protection hub, and in Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro.

Though it won’t be public or visible to buyers, the information you provide will be used by eBay to help identify and take action against these buyers and sellers. They may be suspended or placed on restriction and their feedback and Buyer Protection cases removed from your account.

Starting in November, you’ll also see on your Seller Dashboard the number of times negative Feedback, low DSRs, and Buyer Protection cases were removed from your account due to seller reporting and eBay’s detection methods.

Can this be true?

Is eBay finally starting to get the message that---contrary to what they have been saying for the past few years---all buyers aren’t perfect?

Gasp!!!

What heresy for eBay!

If so, this could be a major breakthrough for dropship and all other sellers on eBay who have been at the mercy of every penny ante crook and sourpuss with an axe to grind against those who can’t defend themselves.

Dear old “Uncle Griff,” the alleged seller advocate, has often commented that every time a transaction goes south it is the fault of the seller. Every time. No exceptions.

His avowed belief is that there are no such things as bad buyers, only bad sellers.

Or, at least that used to be what he said in his discussion thread on Seller Central.

Nobody really knows what he might be thinking these days because he isn’t saying anything, having vanished from the infamous “Ask Griff” thread several months ago, never to be seen again. To date, anyway.

Now, sellers probably don’t much care what Uncle Griff says or thinks one way or the other, but if eBay itself is backing off their similarly biased claptrap that demonizes sellers while elevating all buyers to sainthood….that might be interesting!

Be on the lookout for the new reporting hub and start being a whistle blower when someone attempts to extort you for an unwarranted refund or leaves undeserved bad feedback or DSRs. It could help your dropship business!

First of all, think about how this will impact your online dropship business sales on eBay:

Many buyers need to ask a question before bidding. Regardless of how thorough you may think your description is, you can chalk it down that there will be some buyers who will think of something that needs addressing NOT covered in your description.

At that point, they click the “Ask a Question” link and send you, the seller, their question.

Simple, right?

Wrong.

For many years, this “Ask a Question” link has been on the right side of the page, at the top, along with “See Other Items” and “Save This Seller.”

Save This Seller is certainly appropriate because many sellers will need saving when eBay sales---already waaaaay down due to over two years of the current CEO’s “disruptive innovations”---totally tank because buyers are unable to ask sellers a question.

Now, not to be misleading, there is a link to ask a question.

Guess where?

All the way down at the very bottom of the page.

How will buyers know to look for the link down there?

They won’t.

But, the few that do scroll all the way down the page to the bottom in search of the missing link will be treated to the eBay ad for its credit card and other sellers’ similar items.

Oh happy day! Now eBay is gouging its sellers for outrageous fees to advertise the competition’s listings!

Presently, the only ad that will benefit eBay is the plug for their credit card, but one must suspect that new ads are in the making, hence the true reason for relocating the Ask a Question link to the bottom of the page.

If you have online dropship sales or other sales on eBay, it would be a good idea to edit your listings to include the information about where to locate the Ask a Question link, preferably at the top of the page where buyers can actually see it!

Summer is traditionally somewhat slow for many eBay dropship sellers, and according to reports, this summer is particularly sluggish since the newest policy changes back in March that buried eBay auctions among thousands and thousands of store listings that were dumped into core.

What can you do to boost traffic to your auctions and hopefully increase your bottom line with more sales?

Try using loss leaders!

What is a loss leader? In a nutshell, a loss leader is something a merchant offers at a very low price for the purpose of attracting customers, who will then purchase other products.

Yes, in some instances a loss leader really does mean that a seller takes a loss on that particular item.

But, look at it this way: If you lose a dollar or two on an item, but it garners a lot of increased visitors and traffic to your other items, and you end up selling more than you would have if the loss leader hadn’t attracted that extra traffic….then you’re still way ahead of the game!

You don’t have to offer more than one loss leader at a time.

For example, if you have auctions set to run for 7 days, then to increase traffic to those auctions items that you have high hopes of selling for a good price provided you can manage to get them seen by eBay shoppers, then you might run just one loss leader during that 7 day interval.

While you don’t want to give away the store, do choose loss leaders that somebody might actually want. It is also extremely helpful to stick to items for loss leaders that are within your niche.

For example, if you sell vintage fishing lures, you should have a loss leader that correlates with that niche instead of something like a bicycle horn, which has nothing to do with your niche and would not attract potential buyers who would be interested in your fishing lures.

Times are hard on FeeBay right now, even worse than they have been for many sellers during the past 2-½ years of “Disruptive Innovation” that has forced a lot of small sellers completely out of business and seen fees skyrocket while service plummeted to new lows.

But, if you want to stay and try to keep your eBay dropshipping sales alive there, you might consider trying a strategy such as loss leaders to drum up some business!

If you are like a lot of eBay dropship sellers, it’s hard to make any money these days and using social media marketing to boost your eBay sales is something you should think about doing.

First of all, if you are going to get any advertisement for your eBay listings, it is becoming increasingly obvious that you’ll have to do it yourself as eBay doesn’t seem inclined to pay for such unimportant little trifles like advertising anymore.

With the average small to medium sized eBay seller experiencing the lowest sales ever, one would think that eBay would invest a few dollars of those outrageous fees they are constantly raising in advertising to try and drum up some business for the faltering site.

However, it might be a little unrealistic to expect logic from the powers-that-be on FeeBay, as past experience has shown us during the past couple of years.

Anyhow, since you are apparently going to be forced to use DIY advertising in an attempt to increase your eBay sales, what better method than social media marketing?

It isn’t all that easy, but it isn’t rocket science either and most people can get the hang of it fairly quickly. Plus, it’s FREE.

Many eBay sellers have a one or two person operation, so trying to spread yourself too thin by covering multiple social platforms isn’t a realistic goal. Instead, focus on two or three of the giants such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Twitter and Facebook are becoming more and more ecommerce friendly, and you might be surprised at how much new traffic you can get from these social sites!

YouTube is a natural for social media marketing because people all over the world love to watch videos.

You don’t have to hire a professional studio to make a short video for YouTube. Almost any digital camera with video function, or home video camera, or even a cell phone can produce a nice little video for YouTube.

Your video should correlate in some way with your presence and/or products on eBay. Make it catchy, throw in some humor, and who knows? It might go viral!

If you are an eBay dropship seller or other type of eBay seller who is tired of falling sales, try leveraging the power of social media marketing to help grow your profits!

Writing a better, more attractive listing can help boost your sales on eBay!

If you are like many eBay sellers these days, you need all of the help you can get…and then some.

One of the things you might consider doing in order to improve your eBay listings and garner more sales is to take a good, long look at your listings.

The more attractive you can make your eBay listings to viewers, the better chance you have of converting interest into an actual purchase!

Here are some tips about the various Dos and Don’ts of writing listing for eBay:

DON’T MAKE YOUR LISTING ALL IN CAPS BECAUSE IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOU ARE SHOUTING AT THE VIEWER AND BESIDES THAT, YOUR TEXT WILL BE HARDER TO READ.

Don’t have your description and terms, etc. all running together in one continuous, long block of text. Most internet users just scan the highlights, they don’t actually read as though they were reading a book. Break your text up into short sentences and brief paragraphs to keep them engaged.

Don’t use an inappropriate font or colors in your text. For example, you wouldn’t want to use a font such as Jokerman at all. The rare exception might be for party supplies or a similar fun-type product, and then only if you used it on a couple of words somewhere you wanted to draw attention, no more. Another point to remember is that you shouldn’t mix up a whole variety of colors used in your text. This is confusing to the eye and will be hard for viewers to switch back and forth from red to green to purple to pink to blue, etc.

Don’t have misspelled words! There is never a place for this. It looks unprofessional, and in fact, it is unprofessional. Misspellings make you look less than intelligent, also, as well as sloppy and careless. Seeming unprofessional, stupid, sloppy and careless is not the impression you should be fostering in potential buyers to gain their trust.

Do use conversational grammar. This doesn’t mean that you should use a lot of slang or sloppy punctuation, but write as though you’re speaking to the viewer in person.

Do make your content easy on the eyes. As a general rule, dark text on a light background is the best and easiest to read. Whatever you do, don’t put dark text on a dark background or light text on a light background so that it is almost impossible to see.

Do personalize your listing in some way that is uniquely yours! This will help with brand recognition---in this case your User ID on eBay---and make it easier for buyers to recognize your listings again. Remember that many buyers buy from a wide variety of sellers and may not remember your User ID at all the next time they’re shopping in your category. So, giving them something to remember you by in the way of customizing your listing is a great way to be remembered. A logo is an excellent way to achieve this. Smart sellers go an extra step and use their logos on business cards or thank you notes that are included in the packaging.

Having better listings is one way to increase your eBay dropship sales or sell-through rates for all auctions!